Reflection

Sorry for taking so long to get these up folks, I don't know what my problem is.

There was a point in class before the break where we had established a lack of individual culpability for actions of this nature. There instead seemed to be an agreed upon satisfaction with the idea that what we and todorov could do was analyze and blame the conditions and mentality created by society. And while I essentially propose that society may be the cause for many Macro events in my post the Jeans of Society , I do not beleive that this can eliminate the ultimate culpability of the individual. I find myself in a bad episode of Voyager about temporal loops because of the various deterministic paradoxes. I believe, however, that if we take Columbus, for example, that we have no evidence to suggest he acted in the way he did because society set him up to act that way, instead, his actions and comments are entirely his own, for this reason his actions can be evaluated on their own merit without assuming a societal determinism. We could make the argument that it would have happened eventually, but it was entirely on Columbus' shoulders that it played out in that exact manner and involving him. Without this I think would could run the table to arguing that everything is societally pre-determined (although I am a physical or perhaps quantum determinism myself). I will contend, at the very least, that we have a sense of free will.

V reflection

I am still not quite sure where to go with this, but I want to discuss V's motivations. I still can't figure out if V favored anarchy, or if he simply felt anarchy allowed him to do as much damage to those who had hurt him as possible. You can kill whoever you want in the land of do as you please. I think it's telling when V offers to avenge Gordon's life despite the fact that this would lend no assistance to his cause. If he were really interested in anarchy I think he would have kept his focus there.

I also continue to wonder just how much control V had over the situation. We bounced around this question a couple of times in class with regards to moral issues, but I wonder if planned out every single thing, knew how people would react and worked to create the "environment" that would cause that reaction, or if there was actually some element of chance or free will. Yes, V just put Evey in the right environment, but if he knew what would happen then he made the decision for her. It's especially telling that he controlled fate--he had the power to manipulate destiny, to predetermine how things would occur. In a sense, this is even greater power than Paul's as he could only see the future, while V writes the future.